


Home is Where the Hearth is

by OnceABlueMoon



Series: Deity AUs [14]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Bitty is Hestia, Gods, Home, LGBTQ Themes, M/M, Trans Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 20:16:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16353557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnceABlueMoon/pseuds/OnceABlueMoon
Summary: Once upon a time, Eric's name was Hestia, but nowadays, he's just Eric, God of the Hearth.





	Home is Where the Hearth is

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own OMGCP.

Eric remembers sliding down his father’s great wet tongue. The last thing he saw before the giant teeth clicked shut afore him, and his father swallowed him, was his mother’s face. Horror struck, her warm brown eyes wider than he had ever seen then before, gasping, and reaching for him as if to save him. 

He did not know it back then, but his father struck her down. 

But Eric was made of bigger things than acid could dissolve, so alive he stayed, forever burning, regenerating, dying over and over and over and over- until his siblings joined him. 

Then they  _ all  _ burned, but at least they had company.

Eric remembers that too, once Zeus rescues them all. There is a reason he picked up the hearth, chose the home as his domain, after all. He couldn’t leave the burning of that stomach behind, because it was the only home he’d ever known, and as such, the fireplace becomes his symbol. The symbol of the first place his family resided. 

His name, back then, was Hestia, but it is a  _ dead name,  _ so no mortal dares to speak it.

(Kronos lies in pieces, and Eric is thankful for it)

* * *

Once upon a time, Poseidon, broad, dripping water everywhere, took his hand asked for marriage. Water splashed into the hearth, but Eric didn’t mind, not even when it sizzled as it refused to go out. He’d been used to it. Poseidon is welcome by his hearth. But not like that. 

Eric smiled, patted his hand, and firmly told him no. 

Apollo, golden, asked a week later, and Eric had to close his eyes before telling him no, because he did not want to see the eyes gliding along his curves- along the curves that were not  _ his.  _

Both wanted a woman, and Eric had never been that. 

They move along, his hearth empty but for the fire burning in it. 

* * *

Not even an hour later, Aphrodite arrived, draped herself against the kitchen table and said: ‘’Sweetheart, if you don’t want them, do me.’’ 

Eric swore an oath of virginity right then and there.

(The coy look on her face still haunts his nightmares, and there is not a single thing Aphrodite could ever do- soft curves, long lashes and plush lips- that would make him love her in that way. 

She took it hard but came back for the pie anyway. He adored her for that, really.

She was always welcome, but she too does not stay by his fire.)

* * *

This is how he lives: baking pies, tending to the hearth, loving and loving and loving. Even himself, even on the days he cannot stand this. The worst days are when he bleeds, but just as stomach acid could not dissolve him, his own body cannot tear him apart. 

He loves himself. Intensely, greatly, a love of legends. 

He is the hearth, the one all come home to, the flickering flame of eternity, the one constant thing in this world. There will always be a home, and he is the embodiment of it. 

Gods and Goddesses are what the world makes them. Whether or not Man thought up the Gods, or the Gods thought up Man, they exist, and the thoughts of others contort the Gods. 

Aphrodite is the most obvious one in this- she twists and morphs at every turn, changing to the view of what the one she meets finds the most beautiful. It is not something she means to do- it is part of her being, she cannot help it. She was born this way. 

Just like Eric was born this way. With shapely, child-bearing hips. With breasts large, in comparison to his small frame. 

Eric looks like a woman because humanity thinks that’s what home looks like, but he is  _ not.  _ He is bitter and tired of being defined by what he is not- Eric is a great many things, and a woman is not one of them. 

He is a  _ man.  _

He is home. 

He is the hearth. 

He is himself. 

The earth can shake as Gaia tries to wake, the sea can bubble with Ouranous remains, his father can scream slurs from the bottom of the Tartarus so loudly they can hear him in the world above, but Eric won’t change. 

This is him. 

For the first time in his life, Eric lets  _ himself  _ rest alongside the hearth. 

* * *

After that, it gets easier. Forsaking the name of Hestia helps. He is the most worshipped God, for every time someone loves their home he is loved, and yet he is also the first whose Godly power declines. Do not mistake power for strength- he has simply forsaken the name of Hestia, and if anyone invokes a name that is not his that is their problem. 

He is the God Eric now, the deity shaped only by his own thoughts instead of humanity. 

His body begins to change, becomes as male as his mind. 

The world changes with him.

* * *

A new era starts. 

Within its dawn, Eric is e _ verywhere,  _ travelling from place to place. But in truth, he’s always liked a stable place the best, so in the end, after decades of travel, he settles in the South of the United States. Southern hospitality, they say, is the best- though they only start saying so after Eric arrives. Being the God of the Hearth has some perks. 

On the other hand, it also means this: there are those who  _ need  _ a home there, so very badly. He’s always been drawn to places where there are those in need of the hearth. 

This is also why he relocates to Samwell University, the number one most LGBT+ friendly campus. So many go there to find a home, so the home of all homes moves there. If his own queerness played a factor in it, well, nobody’s going to snitch on him, right?

He joins the men’s hockey team, and it’s one of the best decisions he ever made. He loves everything about them: the sense of togetherness, the closeness bordering on a cult (…though the likeliness to a cult itself might not be a good thing), the way of life and even the way they sing ‘’Take Me Home, Country Roads’’ when absolutely wasted, at four am on the way back from the pub. It’s a family, a home. 

The Haus is the embodiment of this, and it has a  _ proper kitchen,  _ not those ridiculously small ovens the dorms possess, and Eric cannot wait until he’ll be able to live there. The inhabitants are drawn to the kitchen each and every hour he spends there, snacking and devouring and doing  _ unspeakable things to his pie.  _ But they’re lovely, really, and they sit by his hearth and Eric is content. 

Then there’s Jack. 

There is something so terribly mortal about Jack- Jack, who cries, who fucks up, who is awkward, who skates at five am and drags the rest of ‘em out of the  Haus to go with him. 

Eric has never lacked people to sit by his hearth, but Jack is the first one he wants to keep there always.


End file.
